Forest Born (14 page)
Though she moved as slowly and casually as a deer nosing for greens, the effort made her muscles warm. Razo and Tusken were in a cage, Isi and the others trapped by that voice, and if the soldiers noticed Rin they would kill her and Razo and Tusken too because Selia had said she would kill them if the girls did not do as she said and stay still and . . .
No. Think about Razo. This was just a game. She was playing stealth. She’d stolen Jef’s sandwich and was sneaking away, that was all. To go laugh with Razo. She could do this.
She was just a tree.
It seemed she would never reach the spot, then suddenly she was there. An oak tree, large, ponderous. The cage was lashed with ropes to one of its thick base limbs, hanging above the lapping fire. Selia was heading back to the castle. Isi, Enna, and Dasha were following, flanked on all sides by soldiers. The fire sisters were not bound. They would go willingly or not at all.
Most of the soldiers were moving toward the castle. Even those stuck to their knees in mud had managed to dig themselves out. Only about ten remained. They would return their attention to the cage and take Razo and Tusken back to the castle too. Rin did not have much time.
She pulled a knife from the pack on her back and gripped its blade with her teeth while she climbed. She lay flat on the branch holding the cage and pulled herself closer. Razo was watching, eyes unblinking, terrified and hopeful too. Tusken was asleep in his arms. At the rope now, high enough that the fire below was just gusts of warmth and wind-battered smoke, she pulled the knife from her teeth to show Razo her only weapon. He pointed to a fat, intricate knot securing the rod in the latch, then he made a sawing gesture in his hand. Rin cut at the rope, the effort making the metal cage creak. Her heart blasted with each beat. Razo shut his eyes, his lips muttering something that looked like, “Please, please, please.” Just as Aileann had in Kelish. The echo gave Rin chills.
At last her knife hit the metal rod, and Rin pulled the rope loose, opening the door. Relief poured through her like warm water. She stuck the knife in the ropes for Razo to pick up and took Tusken from his arms. The sudden weight almost threw her from the tree, but she gripped the sleeping boy and bade her trembling legs to hold her steady. She inched along the branch to the trunk, Razo behind her. Tusken moaned softly in his sleep, and even in that moment of terror, balancing for her life, scraping her legs on the bark and barely able to move, she could not help pressing her lips against his damp brow. He smelled of road dust and Razo’s own sweat. Her heart yearned for him and she thought,
I’ll protect you, lamby. I’ll die for you.
She felt the moment when she passed from the bare branch to the curtained privacy of the tree’s foliage, felt it like a sigh. Razo was just behind her. That was when they heard the shouting.
“They’ve seen the empty cage,” Razo whispered. “We’ve got to run, now.”
“Just climb a little higher and they won’t find us.”
“Rinna, come on, we—”
“We can’t run fast enough. They’ll catch us on the ground. The tree will hide us.”
Razo’s eyes darted wildly, trying to see the soldiers through the leaves. “I’ll drop first, then you give me Tusken and—”
“Climb up, Razo,” she said. “They’ll look for movement, they’ll look on the ground. They won’t look up. People rarely look up, rarely notice trees at all. Listen to me and climb!”
Razo hesitated. Rin did not talk like that to Razo. This journey was pulling words and demands out of her, and she feared she’d done wrong. When she spoke again, it was in the barest whisper.
“Please. I know trees, and I know people. This will work.”
Razo looked with longing at the ground, but he nodded and took Tusken from her arms.
The boy was so completely asleep he did not even moan as Razo propped him on his shoulder, holding him with one hand and climbing the tree with the other. They went up two more branches to where the leaves were thickest.
Razo was staring down, scratching nervously at his hair, and glancing back at Rin with an “Are you sure?” expression. She nodded. If the soldiers stood close to the oak’s trunk and looked up, they would most definitely see three people huddled there. But she believed they would not look.
Rin sat next to Razo, sharing a branch, the three of them squeezed between two other limbs. Razo’s breath was coming in fast huffs, from the exertion of climbing with one arm, but also, Rin guessed, from fear. Voices darted their way, shouts of confusion and anger at the cage hanging empty. Now the soldiers would search the wood.
She needed to stay still, stay quiet. But Rin’s heart was thumping again as if to break free, her limbs shaking. Selia had said she would kill Razo and Tusken. Surely she would now that Rin had set them free. And kill Rin too. All of them, in retribution for what Rin had done. The fright and effort burned, and hot tears oozed down her cheeks. Fear was everything and everything hurt so much, she wondered if she might die.
Calm. Please, be calm.
She was too terrified to remember that greeness into herself. She felt ravaged by her memory of Selia’s words, ruined, sure that death was imminent for all of them, and it was her fault. The fear and guilt was white-hot pain. Her trembling shook Tusken, and he murmured. What if he woke and cried out? The searchers would find them in an instant. Razo seemed to be shaking as much as she. They needed to calm.
Inside the tree, water flowed like blood in a body, keeping the branches strong and the leaves alive and green. So sleepy, so content with its roots in the wonderful dampness of deep, deep soil, with the sun down and the leaves at rest. Rin put one of her arms around her brother’s shoulder, and between them embraced Tusken, still fast asleep.
Razo’s eyes met hers, startled and unsure.
“Try to sleep,” she mouthed silently.
Razo grimaced, his eyes saying, “Are you crazy?”
She took a deep breath to show that she was trying, then closed her own eyes. Hoofbeats and shouts from the searchers made her heartbeats scatter and her legs ache, but if she could absorb the calm of the tree, perhaps Razo and Tusken would feel it from her.
She knew that if she listened to the tree, she was sure to encounter that nauseating wrongness. That fear was nothing compared to her terror of Selia and her searchers. Shouts raised goose bumps on her arms, but she clung both to the tree and to the idea of the tree. She could feel her brother start to relax beside her, his breath slowing almost to the pace of Tusken’s calm inhales and exhales. The nausea was creeping around her, the loathing filling her limbs like water in a jar. She welcomed it now, ready to greet that horror over the reality below. Her stomach rolled, her bones shuddered, but she did not let go.
Still half-aware of the danger outside their house of leaves, Rin plunged herself through the sickening dread into oak-bound memories until the present was a distant idea . . . and then, just gone.
R
in’s mind was falling through rings of memory, rains and drafts and seasons of early cold, days of clouds and days of sun, circles and circles, back and deeper, protected inside a hide of bark, tender roots buried deep, fragile leaves lifted high.
She’d grown up plunging into the thoughts of trees, but this felt new. Perhaps she experienced it differently because she had a name for it now—tree-speaking. Or perhaps in her desperation for escape she submerged herself deeper than ever before. She let all these possibilities pass through her like water through roots, without stopping to consider. Still her mind fell.
It was not a dream—time still moved in dreams, things happened in order. This was a moment with no comprehension of time, like a circle has no beginning or end. Rin met herself there, saw herself in a way without seeing—a girl who listens to trees.
The slick wrongness poured over her, coated her. But she did not try to flee, still aware that the terror that existed without was worse. She needed to keep Razo and Tusken resting and quiet, and she needed to hide from searchers, from Selia.
Alongside the tree’s own memories of rain and sun and storm, Rin met her own memory, the one she’d been fleeing from for months—
Wilem is beside her in a tree, leaning near, and
warmth rushes through her whole body as she realizes, I can make him
stay.
Rin jolted, almost waking from the tree sleep. Stumbling across that memory was like tripping on a hidden root and falling flat. She became aware of cicadas screaming in the forest night, the crackle of leaves rubbing in the breeze. Rin’s heart slammed into her ribs, and she felt sleeping Tusken stir and heard Razo moan.
No, Rin. Calm. Peace.
If embracing the memory of Wilem was the only way to maintain the tree’s calm, then she would face it. That spinning wrongness clutched at her, but she clenched her jaw and submitted to the memory—not the thin, scrubbed thing she’d toyed with these past months. The truth of it, all of it.
For the first time since Nordra’s stick, Rin desperately wants
something for herself. Razo was her best friend, but he’s gone off
into the world, and the homestead has become just a place for
him to visit. Besides, he has Dasha. Who does Rin have?
For one afternoon, she has Wilem.
He comes over to wrestle and run with the Agget-kin, and
mostly with Kif and Len, two of Rin’s older nephews. She likes
the way Wilem looks, black eyes and black hair that is so long
in front he has to push it out of his eyes. His eyeteeth are especially
pointy, and when he smiles they peek below his lips and
give him an exciting, feral look. She finds it easy to fall into
Wilem’s pattern of speech, his careless but thoughtful way of
seeing the world, easier than anyone besides Razo and Ma. It is
a pleasure to emulate him, to feel as he must feel.
They sit in a tree all afternoon, hiding from work and tossing
pine cones. And leaning closer to each other. The smell of his
skin . . . That treetop afternoon seems like the life of a different
Rin. She is as carefree as Razo, has some of that pretty sauciness
that Ulan does when she tosses her hair and laughs, some
of that sweet girliness that Genna does when she bats her lashes. Rin does not worry about all the chores she is missing and
making sure the little ones are fed and readied for bed—for the
first time, she feels not like Ma’s shadow, but like her own girl. A girl who might be worth knowing. She feels extraordinary.
She takes deadly aim at her brother Jef’s tousled head and
pegs him with a pine cone. He looks around wildly, but not up.
People rarely look up,
she realizes.
Wilem laughs. “You’re wild, Rinna. You’re dangerous.”
She’s never wanted to kiss someone before. But now as she
leans against Wilem, she imagines how it might be—like how
she feels when her hair is freshly washed and a warm breeze
blows it back from her face, like when her belly is full of roasted
quail and fresh bread. Extraordinary.
Dusk settles around them in great dark folds, and the nephews
come looking for their friend.
“Wilem!” they shout, not knowing which tree is his perch. “Come on, we’ve got a prank planned. Are you still here? Come
out!”
Without a word to Rin, Wilem begins to scramble down the
tree. Rin feels all the air go out of her, all the girliness and prettiness
and possibilities. She climbs down after him, faster than
is safe. Her only thought is,
If Wilem goes away, the wild Rin goes too.
And she wants to keep that Rin so badly, she
wants to cling to her and not return to being Ma’s shadow—
silent, harmless, forgettable.
She’s nearly climbed to the Forest floor when in her haste,
she slips off a branch and into Wilem. He catches her. And he
doesn’t let go. Her heart bangs against his chest, a sensation
that’s pleasantly painful, and with barely a hesitation, she breaks
that safe barrier she’s built since Nordra and the stick. She
speaks her desire.
“Stay,” she tells him. She does not just say the word—she
speaks it with meaning, with intent. She hurls the word like a
stone. He stays, for the moment at least. But his gaze shifts, his
arm drops from her back. One word won’t keep him.
This is when she lies.
She studies his face, as she did long ago with Nordra, and
knows what words will convince him to stay. She can read his
anxious doubt—his admiration of her nephews is intense, and
he fears they think him a hanger-on.
Don’t, Rin,
she warns herself, but she feels so free, so wild;
no fledgling on the nest but a falcon commanding the winds.
“Kif and Len never really liked you, you know,” she says,
one hand smoothing Wilem’s tunic. His chest muscles flex
under her hand.
“What do you mean?”
She glances up at him through her lashes and then back
down.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you knew how they are. Meaner
than hungry dogs. They talk about you when you’re not here,
say you’re boring and foolish. They were planning some cruel
joke on you to night, that’s why I wanted to keep you away
from them.”
“But . . . they wanted my help pranking Jef.”
She shakes her head sadly. “Kif and Len are waiting by Jef’s
house, but they mean to shove you into the dung pit.” That was
not a playful prank—that was the kind of cruel trick no kin of
Ma would dare pull.
Wilem’s brows pinch together. “Why?”
His sadness almost changes her mind then, but there are so
many unspoken words beckoning her, filling the world with
new risks, new chances and adventures. She’s reminded of her
brother Deet’s report of drinking his first ale in the city, how it
was bitter and made his stomach sore, but he did not want to
stop drinking. Words are ale on her tongue and in her belly,
heavy and foul. And irresistible.
She lies some more. “They’re blind for not liking you. It
makes me so angry. I didn’t want to tell you, I wanted to keep
you with me, keep you safe from their cruelty. You should stay
with me, be my friend. I won’t treat you like that. You’re
smarter than them anyhow, so let’s play a trick on them
instead.”
“Sure, that’s what we’ll do.” Wilem’s eyes light with pained
pride. “We’ll show them.”
Words are easy when she allows herself to use them without
fear or shame. Now speaking is like that rare and perfect kind
of sleep when she can control her dreams, guiding her own mind
to what images she wants to see. She is controlling this moment. She is not a feeble stick of a girl after all. All this time wasted,
acting as Ma’s shadow, hiding inside others’ behaviors, being
small, dismissible. Now she feels power like a staff in her
hands. Even the wrongness of what she does thrills her.
Why has she been so afraid of words? They are wonderful!
She steps closer to Wilem. “They mocked you, said you’d
never kissed a girl. They said you would be too afraid to kiss
me. I said you weren’t afraid.”
She moves even closer and puts her hands on his arms. It
feels dangerous, the most dangerous thing she’s ever done. But
she feels crazy with words, she feels wild. She believes she can
keep creating this perfect dream for herself, and it will never have
a chance to fray and fall apart. She just has to keep talking.
“Kiss me, Wilem. Just kiss me, and prove everyone wrong. You’ll show them.”
Kiss me.
They are not idle words. She can feel the strength
of them, a command as sure as if she were his queen. And he
obeys. He holds her arms, he kisses her lips, fast and hard. It
does not feel good like a breeze combing through freshly washed
hair. It feels like what it is—a hard, cold lie pretending to be
affection.
“See? I did it! I’m not afraid.” But there is a sadness in his
eyes, as if he has been asked to give away something precious,
like Nordra handing over her doeskin boots.
“Kiss me more,” Rin demands. “Everyone thinks of you as
that lonely boy with a boring brother. They don’t really care
about you. But I care. I’m the only one, Wilem. If you want
Kif and Len to respect you, if you want to be more than
just
that boy,
you need to want to kiss me. You need to be
with me.”
His eyes are hot. He leans to her again, meeting mouth to
mouth. She grabs his hair and holds him to her lips, kissing
awkwardly, trying to find in that touch the feeling she left up in
the tree, trying to find the Rin whom Wilem called wild. And
he is trying to please her. He is in pain from her words, she
knows, and he is desperate for her touch to take away that pain.
She allows his lips to move with hers, against hers, to feel that
his lips are soft, his chin and cheeks rough. She touches her
tongue to his, and the feel of it startles her heart. She grips his
arms with her fingers, pulling him even closer, her lips strong,
her mouth open, urgent, getting cross that she’s still so hollow. She feels wild. But not loved.
Wilem stumbles back and looks at her, breathing through his
mouth. He says, “What now?”
You should want to kiss me,
she thinks.
You should want to stay near me. I shouldn’t need to trick you for a kiss.
She hates the mean, hard sensation in her heart when she
thinks that, hates realizing that Wilem does not love her. So
she just shrugs, wishing him gone. And he goes, looking as sad as
a rain-beaten sapling with his head hanging down, heavy with
her lies.
It is a relief not to be burdened with regret. Anger at his
stupidity feels so much nicer.
A hot, sweet sensation fills her, burning and delicious, and
she walks through the homestead for the first time knowing that she
is better than everyone. There are ways to make them see that. She can read their faces as clearly as looking at the sky to tell the
weather. She’s always been able to see lies and truths in people’s
eyes, to guess what thoughts they hid, though since making Nordra
cry, she forbade herself from speaking on it. No more
shackles, no more rules. Now she is powerful Rin.
Is this who she has been all along? When she’s not Ma’s
shadow, when she’s not mirroring those around her or huddled
up, abashed and afraid to speak, is she so bold, so pretty and
fearless, so strong? Then why has she been hiding? The true Rin
is wonderful.
Kif and Len return later, claiming that Wilem accused Rin
of lying and kissing him.
“We told him to go wash his nethers with pine cones,” says
Kif.
“Our aunt Rin would do no such thing,” says Len. “Don’t
know what’s gotten into that pokey-toothed fool.”